


this flood is slowly rising up, swallowing the ground

by Cirkne



Series: put your body through mad abuse [1]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Child Abuse, Emetophobia, Gen, Kind of angsty, his father is shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 08:44:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10963725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirkne/pseuds/Cirkne
Summary: Red mountain dew was discontinued in 1988.





	this flood is slowly rising up, swallowing the ground

**Author's Note:**

> additionally: an eating disorder is mentioned 
> 
> title from dark blue by jack's mannequin

His mother is sitting at the kitchen table, fingers on the rim of a glass filled with beer. There’s only so long you can spend with an alcoholic before you become one too. Rich has always been afraid of that. The squip helps. The squip doesn’t want to get disabled so Rich doesn’t drink. The popularity is an after thought. _He_ is an after thought. His father has passed out in the living room and he is not brave enough to walk past him to open the window so the stench of alcohol does not seep into everything they own. 

“Rich,” his mother says, tired, not looking at him. She is not a bad mother, but she is not a good one either. “We need to talk.”

Rich has stopped wondering what the squip would tell him to do, has stopped trying to get it to interfere. His family is too much for the squip to handle so it stays in the back of his brain and waits for opportunities like attractive girls wanting a guy to hit on them and tall, scrawny boys that are begging to be made fun of. 

He hums in fear that he might say something wrong. That’s how it’s been since he was a kid. Maybe that’s why the squip doesn’t show up in his home. Maybe there are no right answers here. Maybe his ribs were destined to be bruised so often he forgets how his skin looks when it is not purple and blue, green and yellow.

“I heard you last night,” she says, her words slurring and she would not bring this up if she was sober. She is only sober in the mornings before she leaves for work and he locks the door behind her and breathes until it is time for him to leave too.

“Last night,” he repeats and it must sound like a question to her because she says:

“When you were throwing up, Rich,” and he starts walking out of the kitchen before she can ask him about the eating disorder she imagines he has. It is simply fear that finds itself in the pit of his stomach, pushing everything else out including everything he’s eaten. When he first took the squip pill he was so afraid he’d throw it up too. Sometimes he wishes he had. From the back of his brain, like from a shadow in an alley, comes:

“Hey now,” in a voice that sounds too fake to be as calm as it tries to. Rich breathes out.

“Leave me alone,” he says to the both of them except his mother actually listens and the squip says:

“You should wake up your father,” Rich has learned the hard way that the helpful advice comes with punishment that sounds just the same so he does not know when to listen but he also learned that waking up his father is never a good thing so he walks through the living room to reach the stairs leading to his own and pretends it’s the smell of piss that makes him gag and the squip retreats back. There is no chapter about abusive fathers in the how to manual of being chill.

His windows are always open, even in cold winter nights. He cannot breathe if they are closed. Sometimes he cannot breathe at all. He got the squip after his first panic attack in high school. He thought he had left those in the bathrooms of middle school but this one followed him from home, wrapping around his ribs and his heart. Panic has always been purple. It is the color of the bathroom tiles in their old home. It is the color of his bite marked fingers when he is sobbing but cannot make a sound because his father does not need a reminder that he is there. 

It is funny how he wanted so bad to be seen in high school but dreams of being invisible at home. He still feels like skin and bones even with all the exercise the squip has made him do. He doesn’t hit the people he bullies. The first and only time he did, he broke down in another bathroom, imagining that the bruises his fists formed were the same ones his father left on him the previous weekend. The squip is not programmed to know your triggers. It is, however, programmed to tell you that you are not being cool by sobbing in a bathroom, expecting you to calm down just from being told to do so.

“That’s a lot of negativity I’m getting from you, Rich,” the squip says. It can pretend his bedroom is a safe place, a ship in the ocean, far away from the shore, far away from Rich’s father. He used to believe that too, once. Then his parents took out the lock from his door under the excuse that they did not want him shutting them out. Rich hits the back of his hand against the wall, hard. “I do not understand why you would inflict pain on yourself when it is pain you fear the most,” the squip tells him.

“Controlled pain is different. Fuck off,” he answers. The squip will stop him from saying embarrassing things to pretty girls but not from hurting himself. When he took it, Rich mistaked the promise of popularity with the promise of stability. Red mountain dew was discontinued in 1988. The squip shocks him, from his fingertips to his spine and Rich grabs for the wall, breathes out. It’s not like the popularity hasn’t made it better. He just expected more and he can recognize when it’s his own naivety at fault. 

He takes off his shirt to look at the bruises in the mirror on his closet door. The first time he made out with anyone the girl thought it was hot that he kept his shirt on, the second time he had to slap the girl’s hands away when she tried to take it off for him. The third one didn’t care. The next one did but the squip wouldn’t let him leave, after lifting his shirt up the girl left him in the bed of a stranger. Didn’t come back. He can understand why. His chest is an explosion of colors. He is living proof of destruction. He got his first broken bone at the age of five. The second one just a month later. Eventually his mother stopped taking him to the emergency room and Rich taught himself to snap bones back in place. 

He puts on a shirt to sleep. Which, according to the squip, is not cool but his window is open and he is starting to shiver. Tomorrow is the last day of October and Rich is cold and tired. He does not wonder what November will bring.


End file.
